Times of Pain and Regret

Narrated by: Zhang Guifang 

Compiled by: J Yang 

Edited by: Clyde Xi

February 6, 2026

Abstract

In this heartfelt memoir, Zhang Guifang describes the extreme hardship her family endured in late-1990s China. After years of costly infertility treatments and crushing debt from family illnesses, their long-awaited daughter was born in 1999, only to be diagnosed with a rare, severe congenital heart defect. Unable to afford or access life-saving surgery in China—where the risks included death or permanent paralysis—the desperate parents, having exhausted every option, made the heart-wrenching decision to give up their daughter in hopes she could receive institutional care. Tormented by guilt and fear for her safety, they searched relentlessly for 24 years. In January 2025, an international DNA match revealed she was alive, healthy, and living in the United States. The story is a raw account of poverty, medical despair, agonizing relinquishment, unwavering love, and the bittersweet joy of reunion after decades of grief. It is also a powerful paradox: to give up their child was, for them, to love her with unimaginable pain and sacrifice.

State of Pain, by Asm Farook

1. Beginning of Hardship

Your father and I got married in 1994. He has one elder sister and one younger sister; both are university graduates. Back then, a rural family’s income was extremely limited, and putting two children through college wasn’t easy, so the family’s savings were completely depleted. Your grandparents used the wedding gifts we received from our marriage to repay the debts incurred for our wedding expenses. Although both of your maternal uncles are also university graduates, your maternal grandparents saved all of my regular salary and never spent it. After our marriage, I used the money my parents had saved for me to help your father get his tractor driver’s license and buy a tractor, with the total cost exceeding 18,000 yuan, marking the start of our new life. Earning money was difficult at the time, with the average monthly wage ranging from 330 to 600 yuan. The year 1994 was spent just on training and gaining experience; it wasn’t until 1995 that we finally managed to save a little.

In 1996, your grandfather was diagnosed with liver cancer. From the onset of his illness until his passing, not only were all our savings exhausted, but we also accumulated a debt of around ten thousand yuan. At that time, your younger aunt was still in university, so the financial pressure on the family was unimaginable. As a result, we worked day and night running a fruit business, with your maternal grandfather coming from time to time to help us run it, squeezing out a little time so your father could rest. Because of the continuous family misfortunes, I went with your father to consult a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller said we needed to “change our bloodline’s land” [1] to change our luck. So, in 1997, after repaying the debts, we applied to the government for a residential homestead. Finances were tight at the time, but in 1998, my two elder brothers and your elder aunt lent us money to build a new four-story house, leaving us with over a hundred thousand yuan in debt.

2. Pain of Waiting for You

In June 1998, your maternal grandfather was diagnosed with liver cancer, and by December, he had passed away. We lived in the countryside, and starting from the second year of our marriage, people began pointing fingers at us because we hadn’t had a child. Even your father’s father—your grandfather—said to my face in front of my mother (your maternal grandmother) that I was a “xiongpo” or “male lady” [2], unable to bear children, and told my mother to take me back and annul the marriage. Truthfully, we were anxious ourselves, but what could we do if we couldn’t conceive? So, from Shengzhou to Hangzhou, and to any fertility clinic we heard had a good doctor, we went. From 1995 to 1999, because I didn’t want to bear the stigma of being a “xiongpo”, and we genuinely wanted a child, whenever we had a little money, we spent it on treating our infertility [3]. Although the medication was hard to take and costly, we persisted for the sake of a cure. Heaven rewards the diligent, and finally, in the sixth year, 1999, I became pregnant. Though we were heavily in debt at the time, your arrival brought us immense joy.

3. Holding You Through Endless Suffering

In the third month after your birth, you started vomiting every time you were breastfed. Hospital examinations revealed you had congenital heart disease. Perhaps we were fated to be connected with hospitals. We had frequented them for fertility treatments since 1995. Starting in 2000, we traveled everywhere seeking medical help for your illness. The Shengzhou People’s Hospital could only manage your condition in a basic way; whenever it got slightly worse, we had to carry you to the Zhejiang Children’s Hospital in Hangzhou, 140 km away. The three of us had an utterly miserable life during that time. Because your immune system was so weak, even catching a slight chill would lead to pneumonia and high fever. During that period, we received the critical illness notification twice from the Zhejiang Children’s Hospital. Each time the notice came, your father would carry you and run home, not wanting you to die away from home. For over half a year, I held you day and night, afraid to sleep soundly. But you still fell ill every couple of days, and each time you did, your father had to rush us to the hospital.

The entire family was already relying solely on your father’s meager income from transportation jobs, and he constantly had to leave work to take you to the doctor. Apart from significant medical costs, the mental exhaustion was driving us to collapse. It truly felt like heaven wouldn’t answer our cries, and earth wouldn’t heed our pleas. Holding your frail, sickly body and looking at your adorable little face, our hearts felt as if they were being cut by a knife. That kind of pain, despair, and sense of powerlessness shrouded our entire life. If I could have traded my life for your health, I would have done so without hesitation.

At that time, your younger aunt was still in graduate school. To earn money for her tuition, your paternal grandmother worked day and night, rarely coming home in the evenings. The heavy responsibility of caring for me during my postpartum confinement month [4] and looking after us usually fell on your maternal grandmother. During my confinement month, your paternal grandmother only found time to come see you twice. Fortunately, a friend of your maternal grandmother’s, Zhang Min, who was the chief physician at Tongde Hospital, contacted the director of the orthopedics department at Zhejiang Children’s Hospital, asking him to relay the request to the cardiothoracic surgery department to arrange your surgery sooner. At that time, the director of cardiothoracic surgery, Zhang Zewei, said your condition was treatable, specifically a common patent ductus arteriosus. But the senior director, Hu Jin, said it might not be that simple. After anesthesia, they found a significant blood pressure difference between your upper and lower limbs. After a series of examinations, including cardiac ultrasound and cardiovascular angiography, they discovered your illness was a rare aortic coarctation malformation [5].

Cling – Mother and Baby, by Katie M Berggren

4. The Day We Had to Let You Go

Because you were our hard-won child, even though the family was already deeply in debt, we didn’t want to give up hope then. But reality is always cruel. The doctors told us that medical technology in China at the time couldn’t perform the surgery; it would require foreign experts. Even then, the survival chance was only 50%, with a high likelihood of lower body paralysis. The surgery would cost at least over 100,000 yuan, with post-operative care costs depending on the outcome. Because your father and I didn’t want to give up, we returned home planning to sell the only valuable asset we had—the house we had just built in 1998. At that time, relatives and friends strongly opposed our decision, fearing you might have severe disabilities and advising us it would be better to have another child. Your over six months of treatment had already cost forty to fifty thousand yuan, and there was nowhere left to borrow money.

Due to the connection with your maternal grandmother’s friend Zhang Min, the doctors at the Children’s Hospital also kindly advised that, given our family’s situation and your condition at the time, keeping you with us meant you would either die or be severely disabled, but if you were sent to someone else, there might be a sliver of hope. They suggested we send you to the Shanghai Red Cross, which at the time had a dedicated hospital for treating difficult and complex illnesses. When you were seven months old, a friend of mine in Hong Kong also proposed that we take you to Hong Kong for tourism and then leave you at the doorstep of a Hong Kong Welfare Institution, as conditions there were better than in mainland China, and perhaps you could receive treatment. But we thought if we left you in Hong Kong, finding you later would be much harder, so we abandoned that idea. However, when you were nine months old, the doctors told us the risks of your surgery increased with age. But you were flesh of my flesh, the treasure in your father’s and my hands; abandoning you was easier said than done.

When you were nine and a half months old, seeing us unable to decide, Wu Xin and Wu Zhigang, two of your father’s friends, proposed that they take you to Shanghai. Clinging to a sliver of hope, thinking maybe you were fated to survive and someone might save you, and feeling utterly helpless, we finally agreed to let them help us take you away. But after they reached Shanghai, they went to several locations, unable to leave you because there were too many people around [6]. Later, they went to Suzhou and left you in Yangtze River Park.

Life is But a Dream, by Katie M Berggren

5. The Years of Silent Grief and Endless Searching

While you were still home, caring for you added immense strain to our already exhausted lives. We desperately wished someone could help us care for you, even for a few days of relief. But after you were sent away, because you weren’t left at the expected location, your father and I began to regret it deeply. After all, Suzhou and Shanghai were quite different; we worried whether someone would take you in. We had all sorts of frightening scenarios then—imagining if you might be taken by beggars to become their money-making tool [7], or imagining if you might be taken by bad people to sell your organs [8]. These terrifying possibilities swirled in our minds. So, your father and I frantically asked people to look for you. At that time, someone from a neighboring village was a company commander in the army stationed in Suzhou. We asked him to search for you for a long time, but there was no news. After about a month, with still no word, I dialed 114 and got the phone number for the Yangtze River Hotel next to Yangtze River Park in Suzhou, asking if they had heard of a found child. They suggested I call the police station near where you were left and ask them to check if any child was picked up that day. After dialing the Suzhou Nanshan Police Station, they told me to check the welfare institute for information about you. Finally, the staff at the Suzhou Welfare Institute said they had no record of a child with heart disease born in December 1999, only from 2000. When I asked about the child’s condition, they told me it wasn’t serious. Since the information didn’t match your case, the trail ended there. In the days that followed, I could only drown in tears. Two years later, when your sister was born, things got slightly better, but whenever you were mentioned, tears would still flow uncontrollably.

After sending you away, I dared not celebrate my birthday. Chinese people usually celebrate lunar birthdays, and my birthday is on the same lunar calendar day as yours—the eighth day of the eleventh month. Every year on that day, I miss you doubly. After sending you away, your father wouldn’t allow family photos to be taken; he always said our family was incomplete without you. After sending you away, I went to have your fortune told twice, and both times they said you had a very good fate and would achieve great things in the future. As long as you were still alive, we had to keep searching. So, I kept looking on family search platforms for abandoned infants around your age. From 2009 to 2012, we went to Xinjiang, over 4,000 kilometers away from our hometown, and made steamed buns for four years. When we returned, we had some savings. In 2013, back in our hometown of Shengzhou, we started looking for you again, but at that time, the search was only within a small circle of local volunteers.

In 2016, at our 30th-anniversary junior high school reunion, I spoke about you with a classmate surnamed Zheng, who is a feng shui master [9]. He told me that before I turned 60, you would come back to see us. Though it’s superstition, since we had no other leads, we clung to the hope that you must exist in this world. So, I posted your information everywhere—Suzhou’s 58.com, 108 Community, Information Port, and other social platforms, afraid of missing any matching opportunity. In May 2022, a family search platform was established in Shengzhou. I immediately left a DNA blood sample in their database, and the responsible officer, Officer Shang, even went specially to the Suzhou Welfare Institute to inquire about you. Due to cross-regional issues, no information about you was found. The Baby Come Home platform, the Jiangxi Nanchang Project [10]—wherever I heard there was a family search platform, I tried to find their contact information. In 2023, I again asked Wu Xin and Wu Zhigang, who had taken you away, to go to Suzhou to search for you. My request to them was that no matter the cost, go to the place where you were left and look for clues, trying to find any trace.

6. The Miracle We Waited 24 Years For

Perhaps God took pity on me after seeing me search for so many years and gave me a chance. On September 20, 2024, I added Wang Rong, a volunteer from the Nanchang Project, on WeChat and told her about my years-long search for my daughter with no results. She suggested I try looking abroad. So, with the guidance of the Nanchang Project volunteers, I submitted a saliva DNA sample to an international database. Perhaps happiness came too suddenly. On January 7, 2025, volunteer Teacher Liu told me my daughter’s DNA data had been matched—in the United States. Hearing this news, I simply couldn’t believe it was true! On January 14, volunteer Yang Jin added me on WeChat and also told me the database showed you were in the United States. Since it was in the American database, Yang Jin told me such a match left no room for doubt.

But a week passed with no word from you. During that week, our hearts were filled with both excitement and anxiety. We imagined your appearance, your health, and everything about you we could think of every day. The joy was that you were still alive in this world. We also prepared ourselves mentally—you might not accept us. After all, we seemed heartless to abandon you back then. If you hate us and don’t accept us, we can understand. At 10 PM Beijing time on January 14, I added American volunteer Cassidy on WeChat through the family search support group chat. I talked with her for over two hours about information related to you and my longing for you. She listened to me attentively and advised me to wait patiently for your appearance. At 6:39 AM Beijing time on January 16, while we were still asleep, Cassidy sent me the news I had waited 24 years for—she had contacted you and your American adoptive parents. I thought it was a dream; this happiness came too suddenly; I simply couldn’t believe it.

My child, back then, although sending you away was due to the lack of advanced medical care in the country and our extreme poverty, abandoning you is something we are truly ashamed of. Later, searching everywhere for you, we always held firm: finding you was our lifelong hope; sending you away was our lifelong pain. Now, knowing you are healthy, we are sincerely happy for you. Knowing you are doing well is our greatest comfort.

You are abroad on your own; you must take good care of your health and not overwork yourself. Work is important, but health is the foundation. If you encounter any difficulties, you must share them with us; we will always be your strongest support. To be able to have you back, we must thank the numerous volunteers for their selfless dedication. We hope we can learn to be grateful in the future. At the same time, we are eternally grateful to your adoptive parents for their care in raising you up. We hope you can, within your means, repay their nurturing kindness.

With a heart full of remorse,  

Your Mother, Zhang Guifang  

February 5, 2025

Togetherness, by Katie M Berggren

Footnotes:

1. To leave the old residence and break free from the shackles of misfortune, embarking on a new journey of vibrant fortune.  

2. A term used to stigmatize a married woman deemed incapable of bearing children and thus unfit as a wife, derogatorily labeling her as "man-like" or "abnormal."  

3. China's medical system operates on a payment-first basis; without money, one cannot receive medical treatment.  

4. This is called “Yue Zhi”, a traditional Chinese practice of month-long postpartum recovery, during which the mother is expected to remain largely confined to bed and focus on rest. It is believed that failure to observe can have long-term effects on her health. 

5. A rare congenital cardiovascular structural anomaly that can cause cardiac insufficiency, local compression, and symptoms related to other complications.  

6. Abandoning babies is a crime according to Chinese law, although it is seldom prosecuted.  

7. Being controlled by beggar criminal gangs, used as a tool to make money for them, sometimes even deliberately maimed to elicit more sympathy and alms.  

8. Some missing or abducted children become victims of illegal organ trafficking.  

9. A feng shui master is a professional who consults on and practices traditional Chinese geomancy (feng shui). Some feng shui masters also offer fortune-telling and prediction services.  

10. The Nanchang Project (NCPT) reconnects Chinese adoptees worldwide with their roots in China, supporting their search for birth families, origins, and identity.